Davina McCall has revealed how she was privately supported by comedian Peter Kay after being diagnosed with a brain tumour and breast cancer.

The TV presenter, 58, had surgery to remove the benign (non-cancerous) tumour in 2024, before being diagnosed with breast cancer the following year.

As Davina battled the double bout of bad news, she revealed she found an unlikely champion in Peter, who she was not friends with prior to her illnesses.

While in hospital undergoing treatment on the brain tumour, she told how she received an unexpected phone call from Peter, 53, to offer his help.

Davina said: ‘Do you know who really helped me, actually, and it was really strange. Peter Kay. He called me when I was in hospital with my brain tumour.

‘I really don’t know him that well but he was unbelievably supportive.’

Davina pictured with Peter Kay (right) in 2005 (centre Paul McCartney)

Davina continued by revealing that he stayed by her side after receiving the news about her breast cancer, and said: ‘When I had my breast cancer diagnosis he just talked me through what to do. 

‘He said: “What do you want to do? How do you feel about it?” And he said: “I think you know what you want to do”. And I was like: “Yeah I want to talk about it.”

Davina, who spoke about her friendship with Peter while receiving the Outstanding Achievement Award at the Edinburgh TV Festival, also reflected on how her husband Michael Douglas was also a pillar of strength at that time.

Davina explained how the breast cancer ‘brought them back together’, because the brain tumour had pushed them apart due to the loss of her short term memory.

She said: ‘At the end of brain-tumour-gate, cancer brought us together. The tumour pushed us apart because I had no short term memory – I was over here trying to get better and he was over worrying if I was ever going to come back.

‘But cancer smushed us back together in such a weird way, it was just a beautiful way for us to just reconnect and rebond.

‘I was almost grateful for that experience, and I caught it early so I did make a full recovery but there was something about it that we needed.’

As Davina battled the double bout of bad news, she revealed she found an unlikely champion in Peter, who she was not friends with prior to her illnesses

Davina and Michael wed back in December at Marylebone Town Hall with just close friends and family present.

The pair’s first wedding came just weeks after Davina revealed she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer, and underwent surgery to remove a lump.

The TV star revealed her breast cancer diagnosis to her fans last year, though she noted she had detected it early after noticing a lump and getting it checked, leading to a successful lumpectomy.

She recently confirmed she completed her course of preventative radiotherapy and became emotional about the treatment coming to an end.

Whilst she is not retiring anytime soon, Davina has revealed she is stepping back from full-time work after her breast cancer diagnosis served as a stark wake-up call.

She described the overhaul as essential after facing two major health scares in quick succession – a rare brain tumour in 2024, followed by cancer.

Speaking candidly on the Miss Me? podcast, the Masked Singer judge admitted the double health blow had forced her to confront a lifetime of running from change and overworking.

Davina and Michael wed back in December at Marylebone Town Hall with just close friends and family present

Davina explained that while her brain tumour had initially prompted reflection about reducing stress, it was the subsequent breast cancer diagnosis that truly forced her hand.

‘I had an amazing breakthrough when I got clean in the early nineties,’ she said, referring to her heroin and alcohol addiction in her twenties.

‘I had another huge breakthrough after I had my brain tumour removed. I realised that I needed to de-stress my life.

‘Interestingly, I realised that – but then the breast cancer, which I thought was a very, very frightening thing, made me realise that I really, really had to put that into place. And I have now.’

Heavy rain and thunderstorms may lead to some disruption

The Met Office has issued an overnight weather warning for parts of Northern Ireland.

A yellow warning for thunderstorms is now in effect tonight, Thursday, August 27 until 6am on Friday morning, August 28 affecting three counties.

The forecaster said: ” Heavy rain and thunderstorms may lead to some disruption”.

The Met Office added: “Heavy rain and thunderstorms will move over eastern Northern Ireland during the evening and overnight with a chance of some hail. Heavy rain may lead to some surface water flooding in prone areas. 20-30 mm of rain in 3-6 hours is possible.”

The warning appilies to counties Antrim, Armagh and Down.

As for what to expect during the yellow weather warning, the Met Office has issued some details.

They said:

• Some flooding of a few homes and businesses possible, leading to some damage to buildings or structures
• There is a good chance driving conditions will be affected by spray, standing water and/or hail, leading to longer journey times by car and bus
• Some short-term loss of power and other services is possible
• Possible some damage to a few buildings and structures from lightning strikes
• Delays to train services are possible

For all the latest news, visit the Belfast Live homepage here and sign up to our daily newsletter here.

ATLANTA (AP) — Good Good Golf lost its partnership with Callaway on Thursday and no longer will be title sponsor of a PGA Tour event in November as the fallout continued over a video for a new Callaway driver that showed a man shoving a woman to the ground who was trying to touch the golf club.

Good Good, among the most popular in the YouTube Golf space, has said the video was meant to be a spinoff from the movie, “Obsession.” But the criticism was immediate and relentless, and the pressure began mounting by the day.

The video was deleted the same day it was posted on Aug. 20, but it continued to make the rounds on social media and apologies from Good Good and Callaway had little effect.

“We were disappointed with what we saw,” PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp said Tuesday of the response from Good Good. He said its role as a title sponsor was a “fluid situation.”

“We agree with their decision to use this time to focus on their organization and the work ahead,” the tour said in a statement Thursday. “The PGA Tour believes in golf’s ability to bring people together and create a welcoming environment for all.”

The tournament already was changed on the PGA Tour’s website to “Austin Championship.”

Golf Channel postponed a Good Good reality show Wednesday because a sponsor, reported to be Galaxy Golf, wanted its brand scrubbed from the telecast. Dick’s Sporting Goods removed the apparel from its stories. And then Callaway said it was ending the three-year sponsorship.

The PGA Tour confirmed Good Good said it would pull out as title sponsor of the new Nov. 12-15 tournament in Austin, Texas. The tour said the tournament still would be played.

“After thoughtful discussions with the PGA Tour and careful reflection, we have decided to step away as sponsor of the tour event in Austin this fall,” Good Good said in a social media post. “We recognize that we have work to do as an organization, and our focus right now is on our team, our culture and ensuring we will learn from this situation.”

In the 60-second video for Callaway’s new driver co-branded with Good Good, Garrett Clark shoves Alexis Miestowski to the ground as she reaches for the driver. As she is on the ground he leans over tells her, “Do not touch my new driver.”

Clark and Miestowski work for Good Good.

The video was pulled the night it was posted, and it was followed by apologies by Good Good Golf and Callaway Golf the next day. But then Callaway added another layer of apologies, this one from CEO Chip Brewer, who conceded that while Good Good produced the video, Callaway approved it before it was posted.

Brewer said the approval never should have happened and the company would investigate.

Callaway posted to its social media channels on Thursday that it has ended its relationship with Good Good effective immediately; has taken “appropriate internal corrective actions” and strengthened approval procedures to avoid another mistake; and has committed $1 million to support organizations working to prevent violence against women.

“These actions do not undo the harm caused or excuse our role in it,” the statement said. “We sincerely apologize to everyone who was hurt, disappointed, or offended by this incident.”

Good Good Golf was launched as a YouTube channel in 2020 and now is among the largest content creators in the sport, featuring eight men and four women competing in golf and various challenges. It has made-for-TV shows, apparel and other merchandise.

Clark, the Good Good founder, posted a rambling, eight-minute video Wednesday evening in which he called it “the worst ad known to man” and the reaction to the ad was “not what we stand for.”

“I do not support DV (domestic violence) or abuse or any of that of any kind,” he said.

The PGA Tour has embraced such content creators over the last several years, even staging exhibitions during the week of The Players Championship and Tour Championship.

___

See AP’s full golf coverage here

By DAVID OLASEINDE

Published: 20:55 BST, 27 August 2026 | Updated: 23:29 BST, 27 August 2026

This is the moment an Audi travelling on the wrong side of the road collided head-on with another car in a devastating crash. 

Two men have been arrested on suspicion of causing serious injury by dangerous driving, with the driver of the other car sustaining serious but not life-threatening injuries.

Police saw the black Audi A3 speed away from them before the accident and later found the wreckage of the car after it smashed through a brick wall.

The collision occurred at around 2:18pm in Southampton, Hampshire, on Shirley Road, at the junction between Waterloo Road and Roberts Road.

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A large police presence was seen at the scene with a cordon being put in place.

One person who witnessed the crash said: ‘The sound was absolutely horrendous.

‘I’ve never seen anything like it in all my years living here.’

An 83-year-old woman said: ‘If those cars had gone any further, my neighbour’s flat would’ve gone.

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The Corsa driver suffered serious but non-life-threatening injuries, while an Audi occupant sustained minor injuries

A black Audi A3 allegedly drove on the wrong side of the road in Southampton before colliding head-on with a Vauxhall Corsa

Two men were arrested on suspicion of causing serious injury by dangerous driving. A large police cordon was put in place at the scene

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‘Have they got no sense? After the news the other day about what happens when you drive on the wrong side of the road.’

A spokesperson for Hampshire Police said: ‘At about 2.20pm officers spotted a black Audi A3 in Blechynden Terrace which was then quickly driven away.

‘Officers then came across the vehicle again at the junction of Shirley Road, Roberts Road and Waterloo Road, after it had collided with a Vauxhall Corsa.

‘The driver of the Corsa sustained serious but not life-threatening injuries, while one occupant of the Audi sustained minor injuries.

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‘Two men have been arrested on suspicion of causing serious injury by dangerous driving.’

By LAWRENCE BOOTH, CRICKET CORRESPONDENT

Published: 20:37 BST, 27 August 2026 | Updated: 23:20 BST, 27 August 2026

Thunderstorm warning has been extended to midnight on Thursday, August 27

A weather alert for thunderstorms as been extended by the Met Office as heavy rain continues to batter parts of Greater Manchester.

The yellow warning for thunderstorms was initially issued from 3am to 10pm on Wednesday (August 26), across much of England including London and the South East, the Midlands, East Anglia, and parts of the North West, South West, as well as eastern parts of Wales. It also covers parts of Greater Manchester, including Stockport, Oldham and Tameside.

The warning has since been extended, with forecasters predicting the storms to continue until midnight tonight (August 27).

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They have advised for those in affected areas to expect a chance of delays and cancellations to train and bus services where flooding occurs, spray and sudden flooding which could lead to difficult driving conditions and some road closures, and potential power cuts.

Providing further detail on their website, the Met Office said: “A broad band of thunderstorms and heavy rain will move north across England and Wales on Thursday, perhaps becoming slow moving at times. Accumulations of 20-30 mm in an hour is possible locally, while 30 to 40 mm can be expected fairly widely and up to 50 mm in a 12 hour period in places.

“There is a small chance that some places may see more than 50 mm in three hours and more than 75 mm through 12 hours. Lightning and large hail will also be hazards.”

Forecasters have provided advice for those worried about the weather conditions. On their website they penned: “Consider if your location is at risk of flash flooding. If so, consider preparing a flood plan and an emergency flood kit.

“Give yourself the best chance of avoiding delays by checking road conditions if driving, or bus and train timetables, amending your travel plans if necessary.”

The weather service said there is a “small chance of fast-flowing or deep floodwater causing danger to life”. It added there was also a small chance that homes and businesses could be flooded quickly, with damage to some buildings from floodwater, lightning strikes, hail or strong winds.

Met Office Chief Forecaster Steve Willington said: “On Thursday, slow-moving heavy and thundery rain may bring prolonged rainfall to some areas, increasing the risk of localised impacts.

“There remains some uncertainty around where the heaviest rain will fall, so it is important to keep up to date with the latest forecast and warnings.”

The raids were carried out last month by the Information Commissioner’s Office in Bolton, Burnley, Liverpool, London and Swansea across residential and business premises.

The ICO said this came after more than 12M complaints about motor finance nuisance texts since September last year, with up to 100,000 being received by the watchdog every day.

This week the ICO announced it had fined a company £190,000 for bombarding elderly people with nuisance calls while claiming to be selling devices designed to block unwanted calls.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said Elderly Aids Limited (EAL) had deliberately targeted elderly people.

The investigation centres around alleged nuisance text messages (Image: Newsquest)

They said it made nearly 760,000 cold calls to those registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) between May 2024 and February last year to promote call-blocking devices.

The ICO said complaints revealed EAL callers were, “aggressive, misleading, and often failed to identify themselves”.

One complainant reported their elderly father had been persuaded by EAL to sign up to a call-blocker service, paying £139 upfront and a monthly fee of £6.99, according to the ICO.

The TPS allows people and businesses to opt out of unsolicited sales and marketing calls.

It is illegal to make a live marketing call to anyone registered with the TPS, unless they have given permission to be contacted by a specific organisation.

EAL repeatedly ignored requests from the ICO for information and continued to make nuisance calls during the investigation, according to the ICO.

It also tried to strike itself off the Companies House register amid the probe, the ICO said.

ICO head of investigations Andy Curry said: “Not only did this company target vulnerable people who had explicitly asked not to be called – they harassed them to sell call-blocking devices.

“EAL showed a complete disregard for the law and the people they were hounding.

“This penalty should serve as a clear warning to any business that thinks the law does not apply to them, we will hold them to account for both exploiting people in this way and trying to avoid accountability.”

As well as the financial penalty, the ICO said it has issued an enforcement notice ordering EAL to stop making illegal marketing calls and to meet caller identification rules.

Data & Marketing Association director of preference services Russell Roach, said: “People register with the Telephone Preference Service because they want greater control over who can contact them.

“Cases like this demonstrate why those protections are so important.

“Anyone making live marketing calls must respect the choices people have made about their privacy.

“When organisations ignore those preferences and contact individuals who have explicitly opted out of receiving unsolicited sales calls, particularly those who are most vulnerable, they undermine consumer trust and risk causing significant nuisance and distress.”

Dolly Parton has sung disco, pop, bluegrass and even metal – but for all her genre-hopping, she has always come back to country. From the disco bop of Baby I’m Burnin’ to the metal-influenced Bygones, featuring Judas Priest’s Rob Halford, Parton’s career has repeatedly pushed beyond country’s boundaries while remaining firmly rooted in it.

Although some of her country fan-base waned as she became a pop star, Parton ultimately belonged to country music. She had 25 number one singles in the Billboard’s country music charts, ten Academy of Country Music Awards and her 1999 induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame to prove it.

Country music has had something of a revival in recent years. This has been accompanied by a revaluation of its cultural contributions, partly driven by the popularity of artists such as Parton. But country music can be a hard sell. The oft-repeated response of “anything except rap or country” to questions of musical taste speak to how it has appeared as an example of bad music, widely disliked outside a core audience. If everyone loves Parton, it does not follow that everyone loves country music.

Frequently conservative in its aesthetics and politics, country music is associated with particular people, tropes and values. Many of these associations can be traced to the early years of its invention. What would come to be called country music (the term came into use in the 1940s) had its origins in a racially segregated music industry, where record companies directed “old-time”, “cowboy” or “mountain” music toward white consumers.

Often trading in nostalgic and romantic ideas of the simplicities of rural life, these records were framed as belonging to an authentic tradition the US south. Country’s cultural associations have endured efforts to make it more mainstream, including the emergence of the Nashville Sound in the 1950s: a style of music production that smooths out the “rougher” edges of country performance by incorporating some of pop’s conventions.

Parton, with her rhinestones and wigs, her Tennessee twang, her Appalachian rags-to-riches life story and her all-American patriotism, fits with many ideals of who country music is by and for. Country’s musical markers – uncomplicated melodies, instrumentation such as banjos, fiddles, guitars and mandolins, adept storytelling about everyday life, and lyrical themes of love, work, family, religion and death – can all be found across her prolific catalogue of “little simple songs” (to borrow Parton’s understated description of one of her most successful compositions, I Will Always Love You).

At the same time, Parton reshaped country music in her own image. As journalist Natalie Weiner has pointed out, when Parton first signed to Monument records in 1965 at the age of 19, her high-pitched voice was considered incompatible with country.

Early releases from this time, such as her 60s girl group style Busy Signal, were part of efforts to market Parton as a pop singer. The problem wasn’t just her voice. Parton was having success as a country songwriter in Nashville, but during this time country music and its industry were male-dominated fields, and commercially successful women singer-songwriters were few and far between. Notable exceptions include Loretta Lynn, whose 1966 hit single You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take my Man) is a rather less mannered counterpart to Parton’s Jolene.

Benefitting from the groundwork of figures like Lynn, Parton’s musical talent won out, and in 1967 her first album Hello, I’m Dolly, announced her arrival as a country singer and songwriter.

Subverting country

Country has often traded in reductive gendered tropes, with women frequently appearing in songs as either as loving angels or wayward seductresses. But Parton was a key contributor to a body of songs that offered a richer and more complex account of womanhood.

Just Because I’m a Woman, for example, asserts equality in the right to make (sexual) “mistakes”, while Your Ole Handy Man expresses frustration at having to do all the work around the home for a man that behaves as if he is “as helpless as a baby”. Some of these songs, however, proved too much for country music’s institutions. Her gothic ballad The Bridge, narrating the desperation of an abandoned pregnant woman, and Down from Dover, a song about out-of-wedlock pregnancy loss, were both banned by radio stations.

In other instances, Parton has taken up country’s tropes only to refigure them – 9 to 5, for example, belongs to country music’s tradition of (anti)work songs. What was at stake, however, was not the country’s typical work imaginary of factories, mining or trucks but the feminised, white-collar grind of typewriters and toxic office politics. The sentiment landed. In 1981 9 to 5 spent two weeks at number one in Billboard’s Top 100 chart.

In 1997, Parton dissolved her fan club, which, according to the Country Music Hall of Fame, had previously been one of the staunchest in country music, due to falling numbers among her core country fan base. Although her success exceeded it and distanced some original fans, Parton often returned to country music.

After dissolving her fan club, Parton released her critically acclaimed bluegrass trilogy – The Grass is Blue (1999), Little Sparrow (2001) and Halo & Horns (2002). 2008’s Backwoods Barbie and 2014’s Blue Smoke (the 44th of her 49 studio albums) were grounded in her distinctive blend of country pop.

Parton’s skilful negotiation the demands of the genre, while remaining resolute in doing country her own way, deserves recognition among her many achievements.

Three staff members from the Stars and Stripes military news outlet are suing to challenge their recent firings by the Pentagon, accusing the Trump administration of violating their First Amendment free speech rights to speak out against government interference in their work.

Stars and Stripes publisher Max Lederer, editor-in-chief Erik Slavin and Middle East reporter Lara Korte are named as plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit filed Thursday in Washington, D.C.

The Pentagon, which partially funds the news outlet, fired them last week. A Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment on the suit’s allegations.

Slavin says he was dismissed for insubordination after giving an interview to CBS News in which he objected to potential censorship by the U.S. military. Korte participated in the same interview. Their lawsuit says they were punished in retaliation for publishing a report on deteriorating conditions aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln.

“Stripes’ historical editorial independence is critical to its core mission of gathering and providing unbiased, credible journalism to the U.S. military community, particularly servicemembers and their families stationed overseas,” the suit says.

Lederer was dismissed shortly after announcing his impending retirement, effective at the end of September. He said the Pentagon had installed a new deputy publisher, an active duty service member, under him at the newspaper without his prior knowledge.

The suit’s plaintiffs are represented by attorneys from Democracy Defenders Fund, Lawyers for Good Government, Government Accountability Project and a Yale Law School clinic.

The Defense Department and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are among the named defendants.